The battle for country's soul

The official nickname of Findlay, Ohio is Flag City, USA. So when country singer Aaron Tippin opened for Sarah Palin at a rally in October, his petro-anthem Drill Here, Drill Now provoked a patriotic response. The crowd hissed at mentions of "our oily friends" and their "foreign tankers" while they waited patiently to boo Barack Obama and the liberal media. As we filed out of the high school gym, I remember thinking that country fans must be the most reliable constituency the Republican party has left.

In the past eight years, mainstream country artists and the radio stations that play them have been such enthusiastic cheerleaders for George Bush that it's easy to forget longstanding dissidents Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Tim McGraw, Rodney Crowell and Rosanne Cash. But after an election in which, according to the Tennessean newspaper, more Nashville stars donated to Obama than to John McCain, the balance is shifting.

Tim DuBois, a founder of the political group Music Row Democrats, told me: "Republicans have tried to steal our music, our God and our flag, to make it seem like everyone who is a country fan somehow buys into all their crap. That's what hacks us off. In reality, country music splits right down the middle."

This year, even singing duos were divided. John Rich wrote a song called Raising McCain for the Republican presidential candidate and performed alongside Hank Williams Jr at the campaign's wake in Arizona. Rich's partner "Big" Kenny Alphin gave the legal maximum of $2,300 to Obama. And, sometimes, even individuals seemed conflicted: Toby Keith's song Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue ("we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way") defined neoconservative country's attitude to the Iraq war. But in August, he called Obama the best candidate since Bill Clinton, describing himself as a "lifetime Democrat". By October, however, he had hedged his bets by registering as an independent and praising Palin on Country Music Television.

The Grand Old Party has courted country fans for decades. Richard Nixon invited Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard to the White House. Ronald Reagan pardoned Haggard for his many youthful crimes and called country "one of only a very few forms that we can claim as purely American". During the presidential campaign, Democrats were alive to country's potential to sway sceptical rural voters and made their own efforts to woo Nashville. Bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley made a radio advert describing Obama as "a father and devoted husband ... a true friend of the people right here in southwest Virgin-yee". The first track played after Obama's nomination acceptance speech in Denver was Only in America by Brooks & Dunn - a tune George Bush had used on the campaign trail four years earlier.

In hindsight, country's politicisation peaked with the backlash against the Dixie Chicks in 2003, after Natalie Maines said she was "ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas" on stage at Shepherds Bush Empire, which saw the band banished from many radio networks. The band's triumphant, unrepentant return three years later with Not Ready to Make Nice demonstrated the limits of corporate censorship, although Clear Channel and Cumulus Broadcasting networks remain partisan and powerful.

Country's fanbase - white, rural and suburban - has been an attractive target for Republican strategists, but there is reason to hope that the culture wars have lost traction and that we will witness a return to the music's cussed, libertarian roots, with no firm allegiance to either party. DuBois told me: "I wish I could say to you that the day Bush walks out of the White House everyone will start standing up and saying that Democratic music is the music of God and patriotism, but I don't think that's gonna happen."